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Notes on Eldrazi

Apparently someone didn’t get the memo or just didn’t bother to read it. While others chose the “digest -> ??? -> profit” route, this guy just stood his ground and went on doing what it was doing before, only being better at it. “Low tech, high profit”, as an entrepreneur I know used to say. And why not? There’s plenty of opportunities left before the processing begins in earnest.

Speaking of processing, the ingest keyword and the processor creature type strongly suggest the creative is going for a superorganism here. Superorganism is a collection of organisms that can’t survive without each other, because each of them has a highly specialized role in the whole, which the others can’t do. An example of a superorganism: humans. We can’t survive without the bacteria in our guts that digests our food. The difference being, of course, that the Eldrazi aren’t physically held together the same way we are.

Here’s a bit of speculation: The key to destroying the army is in destroying a key part of the whole, after which the rest can’t function properly and are either easily defeated or simply drop down incapacitated. This can be done is a very lame way, but hopefully if they go this way, they can pull it off.

Of course, Ulamog is the key. After all, it seems to be the one who eats the most. I would hope the whole thing isn’t so easy they just throw a couple of hedrons into key places and that’s it. There is a creature called Brood Monitor. Sounds like something that should be important to the functioning of the whole.

I would also like to note that there seems to be plenty of inefficiencies in the system. The big Eldrazi apparently eat their young (the Eldrazi Scions you can sac for mana), which means the organism as a whole needs to breed food that’s capable of moving on its own. That doesn’t seem very cost effective. Not that they are very sustainable anyhow.

This wins the price for most on the nose flavor. With this on board, your opponent doesn’t want to play lands, which leads to stagnation, or in other words, slow or nonexistent growth. Of course, to keep from being too strong, it doesn’t come into play too soon, but its still something you absolutely have to kill in some formats.